Consider the ICO model. While it has
been abused, it is incredible to think
about a future where early believers of
a technology actually benefit propor-
tionally from its success in the form of
token appreciation. Look towards bre-
akthrough startups such as Uber and
Airbnb — all of them relied on the faith of
early adopters, yet the rewards of their
success were incredibly skewed towards
the equity holders. Of course the users
definitely captured some economic va-
lue through their platforms, but ICOs
present an opportunity to more equita-
bly distribute rewards to early believers.
To tie it back with the previous point,
this is a fundamental restructuring of
the economics of our society.
Capitalism 2.0.
Now that is powerful in ways vastly
different than any other technological
phenomenon today, and is what I love
so much about it. Now, onto my invest-
ment thesis, most likely the reason why
anyone is reading this post. It is guided
primarily by projects whose existence
are defined by a moral obligation, as op-
posed to specifically a technological ne-
cessity.
Not to say those two are mutually exc-
lusive, in fact they are most often inter-
twined, but a moral compulsion is what
will drive the most successful and long
lasting Blockchain projects, just like
how it was the reason why cypherpunks
launched this movement in the first pla-
ce. Sure, maybe Blockchain could help
with supply chain management, but that
is a weak use case. On the other hand,
Blockchain being used to define a mech-
anism of value storage and exchange,
like Bitcoin, that is free from the mani-
pulation of potentially misguided enti-
ties, is powerful.
It is incredibly unjust that individuals
in developing countries, like Argentina,
who have spent countless years working
hard for their families and representing
the fruits of their labor in a currency
that the government promised would
have value, had to see it go to nothing.
Sometimes go to nothing multiple times
in their life.
This is why cryptocurrencies are beco-
ming more and more popular in terms
of actual usage in third-world, develo-
ping nations, where they cannot so fre-
ely trust the economic system like we
can in the U.S.
This is not to admonish those govern-
ments as evil, or to say that our own is
infallible, but rather to make it a point
that coercive human institutions are
prone to error, and often that error can
have catastrophic ramifications on real
people and their families.
That is the power of Blockchain
—
to
make such institutions unnecessary.
The greatest disintermediary. Skeptics
may argue that the volatility of crypto-
currencies is evidence that cryptocur-
rencies are hardly a solution, but that is
only due to the transitory period of the
technology before it becomes mainstre-
am.
No one believed Mr. Tim Draper when
he made the claim that Bitcoin will
rise in value to $10,000 by the end
of 2017, but look at what happened.
Megaphone